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Fake medicine imports grow as 2.6m pack items seized on EU borders: with download

Some 2.6m items of counterfeit packaging material were seized on Europe's borders in 2009 as new figures from Brussels showed a rise in the number of fake medicines entering the EU

Packaging materials made up around 2% of the 118m suspected fake items commandeered by customs officials over the year.

Seized labels, tags and stickers that were believed to infringe the EU’s intellectual property laws accounted for a further 15.9m items, or 13% of the total, statistics from the European Commission showed.

It was the first time that the EU’s annual counterfeiting report had included reference to packaging materials. However, the figures reveal the extent of other faked products and the scale of the counterfeit packaging industry behind those imports.

Cigarettes and tobacco products formed the biggest category of seized goods, accounting for 35% or 41m items – the same figure as in 2008.

Medicines, meanwhile, were the third biggest category at 10% or 11.4m items - a rise from 8.9m in 2008.

China was the biggest source of counterfeit items, accounting for 64% of all cases, while the Commission said that the United Arab Emirates and Egypt were increasingly important areas of origin for counterfeit goods.

Economic slowdown
The total of 118m items seized by customs officials in 2009 compared to an all-time high of 178m articles in 2008 but still forms part of a longer-term trend of growing numbers of fake goods entering the continent.

Officials said that the economic downturn was behind the drop, which was accounted for primarily by the near-eradication of imports of fake CDs and DVDs and drops in imports of fake shoes, computers and other electrical equipment.

However, they warned that while counterfeiting has traditionally targeted more luxury products, there was an increasing trend for day-to-day products such as shampoos, toothpaste, toys and household appliances to be counterfeited.

Algirdas Sementa, the EU’s commissioner for taxation, customs, anti-fraud and audit, said: "Fake products can pose a serious health and safety risk for consumers and cheat legitimate businesses."